Hey, folks. Crusaders of the Lost Mark was certainly a fun episode, full of catchy musical numbers, character growth, and it brought to a close one of the show's longest standing plot lines. There are some folks who disagree, though, feeling as though the episode fell flat one way or another. And through the power of fanfiction, they have to freedom to reinterpret the show's canon in ways which correct these perceived slights. Thanks, Mother is one such story: a fix fic in which Diamond Tiara's character development is rolled back and she's presented as being irredeemable.

Yikes... I can't see that going over well.

Oh look, a 69:46 ratio! In all seriousness, though, this story is actually well written. Those downvotes are mostly due to the controversial subject matter. Speaking of which, let's take a look at the story itself.

While this story is presented as a "drama," it's actually somewhat chilling and would likely have been better received had it run with a "dark" tag instead. Such is a matter for speculation, though, as this story loses even more points for having an insulting description.

Diamond Tiara isn't stupid enough to do something like speak back to her mother without a plan.

Here's the first line, and it's very flatly stating that Diamond Tiara's actions in the episode itself were stupid. That's right; desiring to turn over a new leaf and making a stand for what she believes in is proof that she's dumb. According to this story, the smart thing to do is—

After all, without her, she never could have made those stupid blank flanks want to be her friend.

—dupe others into wanting to be your friend. Why? Because presumably real friendship is moronic. That's what those blank flanks wanted, and they're stupid.

I can understand that this description is presented from Diamond Tiara's perspective, but that still doesn't excuse it from flipping the bird to everything the show stands for.

The only chapter: I couldn't have done it without you

“Well, that went better than expected,” Diamond Tiara said, nodding to her butler as he pushed the door open for her. What was his name again? Jeeves? She shrugged, patting the knock-kneed pony on the shoulder as she stepped inside. “Good work.”

“Anything for you, m’lady,” the butler said, his knees quivering.

This opener does a good job of establishing Diamond Tiara's character. She's evil, conceited, and inspires fear. I like the way this story demonstrates these qualities rather than stating them, though it is sparse on detail when it comes to the setting. If the ponies aren't interacting with something, it doesn't exist. Shortly after stepping inside, she's called upstairs.

“Sit.” Spoiled Rich gestured towards one of the large, cushioned chairs in the room as she stepped back towards the door, pushing it closed and locking the latch with her teeth. “So. Do you have anything to say for yourself, young lady?”

Diamond Tiara bit her lip, her eyes welling with tears before she lifted a hoof to her face, quickly brushing it across her eyes. Instantly, her expression changed, a smile curling her lips. “Thank you, Mother. I couldn’t have done it without you.”

I mentioned before that this story has high quality writing, and this is another example. That bit about feigning tears and then 'removing the mask' is a demonstration of Diamond Tiara's stellar acting ability. This story requires the reader to accept that previously-never-seen-skill in order to buy its premise: namely that the events of the episode were fabricated for the purpose of duping the Cutie Mark Crusaders (CMC) into liking her.

What, exactly, does that mean? Well, here's a list of the show's events, according to this story's perspective:

• Diamond Tiara deliberately sabotaged her own class president election and goaded Silver Spoon into breaking up with her.

• She pretended to be admonished by her mother and feigned the entirety of that heartfelt 'Pony I Want To Be' song.

• She correctly predicted that the CMC would invite her to hang out, and that Pipsqueak would come to them for help when his proposal to fix the playground got rejected.

• She tricked them into chasing her back to the schoolhouse where she staged that fight with her mother.

• Her nice act when helping the other school ponies repair the playground was just that—an act.

• She doesn't actually believe that the CMC's new cutie marks are amazing.

That's a lot to swallow, and the story flat-out ignores the complexity and difficulty of pulling off such a sequence of events by presenting it as a done deal that's already happened in the past.

“Seriously, a pony who doesn’t know what her cutie mark means? I spent an entire year running things around here. The paper, class president last year… Don’t they even remember how I got my cutie mark?”

“Probably not. Most ponies don’t see beyond their bit pouches.” Spoiled Rich waved a hoof airily.

This story is by no means perfect, and this is the first part where the narrative fails. In order to justify Diamond Tiara's characterization, it references an event which was never shown: the origin of Diamond Tiara's cutie mark. This is an asspull, and a bad one at that. The way Spoiled Rich belittles anyone who fails to remember this event (namely the reader) is particularly irritating.

“Yes, well, such is the value of social connections.” Spoiled Rich shook her head. “After I found out that Princess Sparkle was giving those lessons away for free, I knew it was important to get in good with those blank flanks.”

Here, the story shows us the reason that Spoiled Rich wanted the CMC on her daughter's side. By the show's own standards, they are pretty special—more so than Diamond Tiara in some ways. The story builds upon that by labeling the CMC's new shield cutie marks as 'prestigious.' Regardless of motive, networking is very important for success in life and the CMC have the direct ear of a princess, along with being decent ponies themselves.

However, this story greatly undermines their competence by taking away their accomplishment of reforming Diamond Tiara. Without that, their new cutie marks are useless as everypony eventually gets a cutie mark on their own and, according to this story, there's nothing to learn about them after they appear. Thus, they essentially got their cutie marks in being stupid—a fine interpretation of the show's canon, ya?

The story also flubs Diamond Tiara's relationship with Silver Spoon pretty hard. I've always seen her as a like-minded individual and it makes sense for them to be close, but not according to this story.

“Oh, please,” Diamond Tiara flipped her hoof. “Silver Spoon is just a follower, latching onto more important ponies and doing whatever they say. It’s not like she matters.”

Spoiled Rich clicked her tongue, sliding her hoof under her daughter’s chin to look her in the eye. “Now, Diamond. What did I tell you about throwing ponies away?”

Diamond Tiara sighed. “Don’t ever throw anypony away, because you can always use them again next time.”

Diamond Tiara gets a lesson about recycling sycophants so that they can be reused later. Thus, she's required to apologize and she promises to do so in the most patronizing manner possible.

The next part is mostly talk about dresses, which is cute. One good thing about this story's interpretation of events is that it allows Diamond Tiara and her mother to be affectionate and loving towards each other. In fact, while I've been focusing on how this story relates to the episode, most of it is actually devoted to bonding moments where her mother doles out life lessons. They're quite practical, assuming that they live in a cutthroat society. The story also acknowledges that Filthy Rich is a nice pony. Of course, Spoiled Rich is quick to jump on the fact that she's just using him.

Diamond Tiara gloats about how much fun it'll be to run the student council through Pipsqueak, and the story ends when she lays out her plans for the CMC now that they're her 'friends:'

“Yeah. You remember those dumb cutie mark consulting services they have in Canterlot? Well, the Crusaders think they have some real talent there. Maybe that’s why everypony else got their cutie marks before they did.” She smiled nastily. “I’m sure there’s lots of rich ponies who are worried their colts and fillies aren’t going to get the right cutie marks who would love to get personal advice from Princess Twilight’s personal students. I’ll have to talk to dad about taking out an ad in the right paper.”

That's 'not bad' as in 'not evil.' Dumb question, but why go through the trouble of presenting Diamond Tiara as evil and unrepentant if this story was just going to end on something that reformed Diamond Tiara could easily have done?

So how well did this story do as a 'fix fic'?

It's passable. The premise might be absurd, but it still manages to make it sound plausible within canon. There are places where it diverges from the episode, but those could be fixed with a bit more polish. Notably, in the episode Diamond Tiara was not aware the CMC were watching when she slunk back home and also during her 'Pony I Want to Be' song. This story assumes that she was.

More damning is the sheer complexity of the events when viewed as a conspiracy theory. Diamond Tiara's too young to come up with such a plan by herself, and her mother shouldn't know enough about the school children to tailor a scheme to their individual personas. Perhaps Cheerilee was involved somehow? Well, it wouldn't be the first time that a public official had taken bribes.

I'd like to point out that in Twilight Time, Diamond Tiara's method of buttering up the CMC was to invite them to hang out and pamper them with the luxuries of rich ponies. That approach is vastly more sensible than a convoluted-as-heck conspiracy, and it's canon too.

The worst part though, is this story's treatment of Silver Spoon. If the point is to present a 'business as usual' Diamond Tiara, then the sensible thing would have been to keep them as friends and include her in the conspiracy. That would have worked very well with the episode itself, as Silver Spoon was used to foreshadow Diamond Tiara's redemption.

    [Silver Spoon]

        I've a tiny suggestion

        That you should be aware

        You could probably win this election

        If you show them all you real—

It doesn't take much imagination to see that the words which got cut off were 'really care.'

Instead, this story flies in the face of every episode by claiming that their friendship is a lie. On top of that, it also ignored the scene where they made up in the episode itself. No points there.

How well did this story do as a dark fic?

Okay, as a drama this story sucks because it's devoid of emotional turmoil and features like negative character growth. I did mentioned that it's somewhat chilling, though, and that's because if you accept the premise then the implications are disturbing. The CMC's victory is hollow, as Diamond Tiara is rotten to the core. She and her mother are so smart that they can twist almost anything in their favor. A world in which evil like that exists is a dark one, indeed.

However, this story failed at building upon that momentum, and kinda runs itself lame. Again, that part with Silver Spoon hurt the story, but in a different way. In the spirit of the episode itself, I'll post a song to summarize my thoughts:

Yeah, it might be friendship for the wrong reason, but this story is still telling us that friendship is magic. In order to be dark, it needed to show us why that type of friendship is bad. Without that, the story lost its teeth. The ending in which Diamond Tiara explains her plan for the CMC also suffers the same problem. What's the point of using evil Diamond Tiara if her actions are indistinguishable from the reformed version? It's like this story doesn't even want her to be evil, but that's completely incongruous with its premise wherein she flawlessly executed a devious plan with genius-level manipulation to chilling effect.

To fix that, the story could have hinted at how badly Diamond Tiara was going to abuse their trust. For example, if it presented a scenario in which she planned to pull the plug on their business partnership, leave them hanging with all the problems, and go on to rub in just how useless their cutie marks are, it could have been very dark, indeed. Instead, we just got an insulting story which was better at patronizing the episode than establishing its own atmosphere.

I'm less than impressed. First of all, as a fix fic, it's pretty harsh about asserting its opinion and it fails to respect the source material. Yes, that's mostly the description's fault, but a poor description can easily taint one's opinion of the whole story. Secondly, after establishing that Diamond Tiara escaped reformation (however convoluted that process was), it failed to properly make use of that by presenting a scenario which would have worked well regardless of her morality.

I may have harped on that a lot, but the story does actually have a reason for going that route. You see, what it really wants is for you, the reader, to buy into its warped views and accept its vile headcanon as your own. By presenting a path which allows the evil Diamond Tiara to appear nice on the surface, she can continue to remain evil behind the scenes in your head regardless of what the show does with her in the future. This, I fear, belies the true purpose for which story was written: to avert charge and preserve the status quo. To this, I say:

Get over it.

Certified Flamebait Ribbon • Here's an idea: let's take a popular episode, gut it, and flush all the character growth down the toilet.

Art Of The Fanfic Award • Yes, this story does qualify. It has excellent grammar (point 1), builds upon canon events (point 4), definitively takes place in the pony world (point 5), and keeps Diamond Tiara in-character based on her appearances in previous episodes (point 6).

Conspicuous Contrivances Award • The story deserves this medal for claiming that the events of the episode were the result of a conspiracy and then claiming that the entire plan went off without a hitch.